


My Brother's Keeper

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Blood Kink, Dialogue Heavy, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Incest, Look at all these tags, M/M, Mild Gore, Suicidal Thoughts, in a weird ainur-y way, indulgent use of pronouns, man i hate the piped relationship tags, shout at me if i screwed these up, vaguely Cthulhian now that I think about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7995406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite everything, Eönwë still seeks his brother. (Someone is deluding himself, and it's not who you might think)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know more about the warnings, there are spoiler-y details in the endnotes!

Another deep rumble sounds in the distance, but Eönwë, picking his way across the top of the cliffs, pays it little mind. The noises have become more and more frequent, as great chunks of the seaboard are loosened by tremors and fall, in larger and larger chunks, to meet the sundering surf below, but that means little to him. His troops murmur amongst themselves that Beleriand has changed, and will change further still, but Eönwë could not know: he has never been to this miserable place before, and he could hardly care less if a little more of it tumbles down into Ulmo’s domain: perhaps something may even brain Ossë on the way down. Either way, let the Seamaster care for a few more chunks of dirt: it is of no concern to him.

No, what is his concern is the long figure perched atop the cliff before him, its back turned to his approach and its hair streaming out wild in the rising wind. Even here, even now, something about it calls to him.

“As always, thy sense of the needlessly dramatic has picked a fine place to manifest itself.” He is too far for even the ears of the Firstborn to parse the sound, but then, neither he nor the figure are limited to such poor senses – or even to senses at all – and he knows that it will hear him. Still, he is some distance away, stalled for a moment at a particularly troublesome piece of rock. With an annoyed huff, he decides that it is worth neither his nor his dignity to be seen stumping around such a minor obstacle, and so expends but a fraction of his Valar-enhanced powers to heft the boulder and toss it away into the sea.

The figure does not stir so much as a hair, aside from the hairs already whipping in the squall, and for some reason, this vexes Eonwe more than anything else.

His sword, Vartasár – the first of Aule’s steel works that has blessed these shores, unless the traitor stole some in his flight – is whispered from her scabbard with a suitably menacing noise as he continues to stalk forward.

“Nor does thy silence aid thy cause. It makes thee seem guiltier than thou must claim thou art.” Eonwe is almost within the range his bodily arms can reach, and with a delicious tingle of the rightness of it, he imagines laying the very edge of the blade to the back of his brother’s similarly flesh neck. “Not that thou hast ever cared enough for thine image, eh, Mairon?”

  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The knowledge that a brother had defected to the Great Enemy had hit the Maiar hard. They were creatures of action and light: made to praise and glorify, beautify and love. They had served the Valar, their betters, in close conjunction ever since the One had allowed them to enter the world, and so to see Mairon’s rejection of such high purposes had been unfathomable.

But the betrayal had been especially hard on Eönwë, who had been himself closest to this most beautiful and shining of his brothers.

_(They were not brothers in the sense that the Firstborn, or their even more sickly cousins, would reckon the term: that weak idea of “brothers” as so shakily defined by expulsion from the same sticky cock or the same dripping womb, or – depending on the bloody-mindedness of the particular brat one asked – both. Disgusting. He and Mairon had been brothers in the true sense: created from the same strand of the Flame Imperishable, sung to the same purpose to order and protect, called to stand together until the World was remade.)_

One shortcoming to an infallible memory was that it never faded.

Mairon had been glowing when he stumbled across Eönwë. Privately, Eönwë thought that even the surrounding light of Telperion could not compete with his brother’s beauty when he smiled.

“What cheers thee so, this eventide?” he had asked, graciously: the fondness of an elder brother indulging his younger favorite.

Mairon had startled, obviously not suspecting that anyone was occupying the shadows thrown by the bushes during the brief moments of the Mingling. And at first he had seemed disconcerted at the appearance of his older brother – they had been arguing at the time, Eönwë has long since forgotten what the quarrel had concerned – but Mairon’s obvious joy had quickly won out over whatever silly anger he had been harboring against his elder brother.

“We have been chosen, brother!” And Mairon had laughed then, such a giddy little noise of pure exhilaration, that Eönwë had felt a thrill at his pure voice. Shaking his head at such exuberance, he had stepped more fully from the shadows and cupped a hand to his brother’s face, feeling the fire-heat beneath Mairon’s skin as he tilted the shorter Maia’s face to meet his own.

Eönwë still recalls watching the play of light and shadow, such an odd thing to see in the Blessed-Lands-just-restored, as those elements danced across Mairon’s laughing face: he wonders, now, whether that sight should have served as an omen. “Well, whatever it is that has restored some of thy fire to thee after all thy moping, I am glad for it.” He had dipped his head down to rest his lips upon his brother’s in greeting.

“Release us!” Mairon had demanded, putting his hands upon Eönwë’s and wresting the older Maia’s hands away. “We have had words with thee, and more than words, about touching us: hast forgotten so quickly?”

“Peace, peace.” Eönwë had looked on in amusement, humoring his brother and letting him put his hands aside. “Thou art troubled by such senseless things, at times. But to that later. Tell me of what hast made thou so happy.”

“Thou wouldst not understand. Thy stopped-up ears prevent thee from hearing many things.” Mairon had pulled away again, resuming on the way he had originally come, and Eönwë had hurried to catch up with him, uncertain why this only caused Mairon to shudder and walk faster.

“Try me,” he had urged. When his beautiful younger brother had still hesitated, Eönwë reached out and grabbed his arm, using his momentum to pull Mairon to face him.

But a stroke of his hand down the younger’s face had only led to a squawk of displeasure as Mairon resorted to being difficult and struggled. “Eönwë, release us!”

“Enough of thy silliness for a moment, pretty one,” Eönwë had clucked, petting his face again and chuckling at Mairon’s mock-displeasure. “Tell me what thou came to say.”

His younger brother had been silent for long enough that Eönwë began to consider other measures to assist his speaking, but eventually Mairon decided that he had enough spirit for a final pettiness.

“We came to say thee nothing,” he had spat, wrenching away from Eönwë’s embrace.

He then wrecked Eönwë’s happy understanding of a World marred but repaired, broken but livable, with a mutinous glare and a single declaration: the last they would exchange for countless years. “We are leaving.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Great Enemy is gone now, and with him, it seems, half of Arda is determined to do the same. Another section of the cliffside tumbles down to be swallowed by the spray below, and is lost to the pitiful annals of the Children’s histories much the same as all the damnably identical chunks of rock before it.

Vartasár drawn from her scabbard, Eönwë finally comes to stand directly behind his brother. No, he has not seen his face yet, and the hair and height and scent of this delectable new body are changed, but who else would this be? Eönwë has put down all the Valaraukar he has come across, and no simple Child of either Eru or Morgoth could stand his approach. It must be Mairon. He would know his brother anywhere.

Eönwë sets Vartasár’s edge lightly across his beloved brother’s neck.

“Dost value thine life so little that wouldst risk it for a theatric moment of jealousy?” He is not actually curious to know the answer: he rather suspects he knows it, as Mairon always did like to defy him. Perhaps this will finally provoke a reaction, though. “Dost not recall that I will do what I must to protect thee, even from thyself? As I always have?”

Otherwise, he does hate the necessity of endangering his precious brother’s pretty body.

Unsurprisingly, Mairon takes the bait and turns, utterly unknowing of the way that Vartasár could rip his spirit from his flesh as easily it had his late master’s. Eönwë’s love forces him to pull the blade away. But then, facing his brother fully for the first time in uncounted years, Eönwë cannot contain a gasp.

Mairon’s eyes, once dancing and full of life, now stare through him, blank and empty, and his beautiful face is set as though in stone.  
Of everything that Eönwë had come expecting, of everything that he can attribute to the ravages of the Great Enemy, this travesty is by far the worst. He remembers eyes like Varda’s stars, save brighter and warmer: pools of molten gold unrivaled by anything in Aule’s forges. Now, a stagnant scratchy yellow burns through him from the dried-out remains of those pools, unrelieved by iris or pupil, emotion or inflection. He remembers a visage constantly in motion, flicking between pride and pettiness, joy and anger, desire and antagonism, as quickly and cleanly as the hottest flame. Now, the aspect facing him is carved into blankness, unreadable lines underscoring the dimples of long-ago laughter.

Eönwë wishes, with a sudden burst of anger, that he had left something of the Enemy to carve. Perhaps seeing his despoiler so cloven himself would restore Mairon to some semblance of his long-ago beauty?

“And if we did, brother?” Mairon’s voice is different now too. In the summer of their long-lost childhood, it had been high and pure of note, every word ringing with the power and tone of a hundred bells: now, it is rough and unfathomable, as though Mairon has swallowed razors wreathed in smoke. Eönwë will grow to love it – how can he not? it is still his beloved brother’s, marred as it is – but the change will take some getting used to. “Recall, or mayhap even, care?”

“Well. If we did,” Mairon continues, briskly, answering his own question in a quirk that Eönwë is secretly delighted to see he hasn’t lost: “still care that thou hast not outgrown thy petty threats, thy deaf encroachments upon us, we would be unsurprised to see that thy so-termed Blessed Lands have not taught thee better.” He sounds so lost, so tired. “But, we think, we no longer have the capacity for either. With this before us” – a gesture encompasses the crumbling coastline, tremors still shaking the further cliffs to pieces into the sea – “there is no room left for further horror.”

Strangely, Eönwë noticed, Mairon is trembling. Why? What has the most admirable of the Maiar to fear from a few pieces of rock? He makes a great noise over the inconsequential, as usual.

“We have withered in the face of such wanton cruelty, and the gods who permit it,” Mairon whispers. “If thou art their beloved, brother, their shining soldier-son, it seems that thou may take what thou please, to just such an end as the ravaging sea. So be it! We will stand in thy way no longer, should thou still desire what little is left of us. It seems it is thine for the breaking, as much as the world is!”

“How strangely thou still speak,” Eönwë murmurs, fighting the urge to take Mairon in his arms as he once did. He has not lowered Vartasár completely – unsure whether he can trust his beloved brother not to make a mad dash against him – but the urge to do so is strong.

“Say rather, how strangely the world hath turned!” Mairon cries, in real agitation this time. The stone-like aspect of his face cracks, and Eönwë feels the urge to stroke it as of old, to soothe him, grow stronger. “Doth not see this?” Eönwë is distracted, captivated by the strong hand that flutters out to encompass the crumbling shoreline, the debris-laden waves, the eerie half-lit sky. “We have known for some time that the gods are cruel, and that we must all be sacrificed on their altars. We also knew that we could not choose this end, or else a way out of it: it simply was.”

Mairon’s voice grows higher as he works himself to an unnecessary frenzy. “We did think, though, that we had a choice of altars, and that our choice might make some slight difference!”

“Brother, thou blaspheme,” Eönwë says sternly. He finally relaxes his stance, lowering Vartasár from her angle parallel to his brother’s soft neck. “The Valar are not the One, and we are not the Children, that we cut each other down at our petty disagreements and squabbles for a father’s favor. Thou art confused and overdrawn.” He lowers Vartasár further, so that she is point-down to the sandy cliff-top and he can clasp her pommel with both hands, mimicking a solid stance he used to take before his brother, all those years past. “But I am here now: here to take thee home.”

“Home?” If anything, Mairon’s laugh grows wilder. The cracks across his face widen, and Eönwë can see a pulsing darkness beneath. “What a word to use with us, brother, when thou knowest we renounced Valinor ages past, and thee with it! Thy Blessed Lands are no home for us, and happy we are at the fact!”

Though his brother is quickly regaining his old quarrelsome moods, Eönwë is simply happy to see that something of his old spirit also remains, buried in the deep darkness beneath the stone of his face.

“Another of thy silly notions, little one, and one that I will work to see thee forgiven,” he promises generously. “The King of Airs knows my favor of thee, and also that my love is not misplaced like thine. Valinor is thy home, and I will take thee back with me.”

As if at a prompt, the stone of Mairon’s face reforms, though Eönwë, peering, can still make out the webbed cracks. His younger brother’s ragged yellow eyes gleam.

“Still thou wilst not see ‘no’ as an answer, brother? Well, then. Thou hast seen but a fraction of what we have wrought here, both at the bidding of our new lord and at our own behest.” Seeing what he must think is confusion on Eönwë’s face, Mairon crows: a harsh, unlovely sound. “The altar we would have died upon was his, yes, but we made it our own as well.

“Again with thy talk of godheads among the Valar,” Eönwë sighs, with real disappointment this time. “Why must thou make everything so difficult?”

“Oh, thou wouldst debate us on this?” Mairon laughs, an ugly grating noise to match his new unlovely range. Eönwë is growing impatient with his brother’s insistence on such foul noises, such pointless exchanges. “Are they not greater than us, was not our service ordained, are they not bound to the limits of Arda for as long as she endures?”

Neither of them know, of course. If the fate of the Secondborn is a mystery, and that of the Firstborn an endless nuisance, then the fate of the Ainur themselves is beyond thought. They should not die. They do not die. And yet, the empty husks of both Eönwë’s Maiar and the Great Enemy’s Valaraukar were strewn across the plains before Angband, most of them laid there by either Mairon or Eönwë himself.

Both of them know this, and neither of them mentions it. But Eönwë has a trump that Mairon has not.

“Mmm. I would concede thy first point and to a degree thy second, but thy third wouldst happily debate with thee. For thy false master I have torn asunder with the blade thou seest before thee, in contest of thy claims of binding, and what remains of his dark veil is ferried to Máhanaxar for the Valar to dispose of as they deem fit.”

If he had not had long ages to learn better, how Mairon threw his spirit into every drama he chose, than Eönwë would have thought that his brother’s cry was one of true pain and grief.

But he does know better, so he simply shrugs as Mairon collapses in front of him, an almost-convincing fascia of overwhelming agony. “Knowing that, methinks thou must now either reckon It un-god, or me a god among them.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the chaotic wake of Mairon’s defection to the Great Enemy, and his seduction of several others to follow him (in years after, Eönwë burns especially bright at the thought and sight of these of these other accursed spirits, the benighted Valaraukar – how dare they follow, be enticed by, his precious brother? He is merciless in dispatching them, something that earns him the first astonished murmurs of his troops), Eönwë simply stews. What can he do?

But when the opportunity finally arises, all those millennia later, he is ready. When the Valar accept the Secondborn sailor’s apologies for his people and their Firstborn cousins, burning into his forehead the Jewel he proffered as weregild and setting his still-screaming remains in the sky as a reminder to his kin (a sign that both the Children seem to celebrate, of all things?), Eönwë leaps at the chance to lead their offensive back to the Savage Lands.

He is disgusted by the army he is to lead – frightened Maiar who cowered in their caves while he and Mairon walked and talked amidst the first bright light of the Trees, the sniveling Firstborn whose spirits Mandos has spat back out into the daylight, and the even more useless Firstborn whose bodies and spirits alike have never left Aman – but Eönwë is determined. He will see what it is about the Savage Lands that had so captured his brother’s interest, and he will show his brother the error of his ways before bringing him home.

The Mairon he sees in the Savage Lands, though, is not the same laughing spirit of their youth in Valinor. Instead, the Mairon he only ever sees on the battlefield, near enough that he can feel him but far enough that his troops die in swathes before Eönwë can reach them (not that he would succor them if he did reach them in time – let his brother have his play!), is utterly different from the pure-voiced brother he remembers.

Oh, but from what little Eönwë has managed to glimpse of him, Mairon is still beautiful: a vision of light too bright to view head-on, a curl of red-gold hair, a glance of gleaming white tooth. But those glimpses also bespeak a different type of beauty, this time around: Mairon’s light burns through Firstborn and Maiar alike, his red-gold hair is bound away from his face with ornaments of wrought iron, and once Eönwë even hears him give a hawk’s scream of primal joy at the gore that paints his bright teeth and bathes his beautiful face.

The new body that his precious brother has shaped for himself is frighteningly precise and precisely frightening, but Eönwë is confident that he remains the stronger of the two. And even from what little he has actually seen of it from such distances, Eönwë imagines his younger brother is as terribly seductive as ever. Mairon’s new body fights as though every battle is a dance – as though the younger one has learned its limits, embracing the bounds of the flesh with both arms before pushing beyond them. And more, Eönwë finds himself entranced anew by the spirit that wears it. His brother has grown, here in the Savage Lands, and Eönwë rejoices at his regained joy, though he will still destroy the Great Enemy for stealing Mairon from him.

And he does, eventually. He feels a savage pleasure when Vartasár finally bites deep into the Great Enemy’s sorry flesh and a few wrenches of the blessed blade tears the first leg from Its body. Eönwë finds himself grinning as his sword tears piece after piece of the Dark One’s veil away to the accompaniment of Its shrieking howls: It had bound Itself so tightly to the muck of the world, he discovers, that It feels pain as fully and unwillingly as any carnal creature. Eventually he casts Vartasár aside with a clang, unwilling to desecrate its hallowed steel with such unholy flesh any longer, and takes to his own body – tooth, nail, and claw – to finish rending the Dark One into Its component limbs. _(He later overhears the awed speculations at the levels of his hatred, by those who had found him there. The talk amuses him, though he does not permit a single thought of him treating Mairon in anything even approaching this manner. He executes the first, and only, whisperers himself. Surprisingly, this does not decrease the awe or popularity. Instead, the Children seem to accept that the executed had somehow deserved the punishment: he overhears something about the ringleader ‘not being right in the head since Tol Sirion,’ not that he knows or cares anything for the geography or crude baronies of the Savage Lands.)_

What had truly spurred such a display, though, only Eönwë had been there to see.

After they had fought their way across the plains and penetrated Angband itself, their advances were no longer contested. Most of the Great Enemy’s major pieces, the thundering Valaraukar and the death-winged angulóke, had been dispatched, and the Morionnië that remained had either run, like the sniveling beasts they were, for a safety that no longer existed, or else retreated into the bowels of the Mountain. Eönwë and his troops had pressed ahead, but eventually he had tired of their hesitance and forged ahead alone, seeking the Enemy where It had probably burrowed Itself into a hole.

He had known when he was growing closer: he had been able to feel the Enemy’s rankness oozing from every pore of steely rock as he entered a certain set of tunnels, and Eönwë was disgusted at the proof that the Enemy had poured Itself into the stuff of Arda. He had burned all the brighter as revulsion at such degradation had joined the anger and vengeance he already owed the Enemy for Its seduction of Mairon.

And then, another corner turned, he had seen them. The image was horrible enough that he came to an abrupt and unplanned halt at the door of what must once have been a private chamber.

The bright new body of Mairon’s, that glorious image Eönwë had only ever seen across the battlefield, now rested on its knees before the Dark One, and Mairon’s proud head was bowed, shaking as though in denial while It murmured to him, as though granting some charter. Worse yet, the Enemy’s hands, blackened from Its long-ago theft of the Child’s holy jewels, were threaded in Mairon’s beautiful hair, carding through its strands in a soothing motion disgustingly similar to that which Eönwë had once comforted his brother. As he watched, Eönwë had seen the ghastly flakes of sullied flesh those repulsive Hands left caught in his brother’s shining hair. A strident shout of pure rage had ripped from his throat, and the Enemy looked up and saw him. Mairon never moved.

He had been in motion again almost before he could think, but the Enemy was faster. Its eyes gleamed with unnatural light, purple-blue-bruise-black with the reflections and refractions of the holy jewels behind them, and without another sign Mairon was gone, as if winked from existence without a trace. The Enemy’s hands had hung still in the air, suspended where they had just clenched the precious hair of Eönwë’s brother, and so they were the limbs that first felt Vartasár’s bite.

Eönwë had had to believe that his brother had simply been magicked away – who would not be able to see how precious Mairon was, how unworthy of destruction? – but if any would be cruel enough, senseless enough, to simply extinguish such beauty in a final caprice, it was the Great Enemy.

And so Eönwë took great pleasure in visiting such cruelty upon the Enemy Itself in Mairon’s stead.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

It takes Eönwë a moment longer than he would like, to place the high keening noise. At first he assumes it is some foul wind or beast native to the Savage Lands: then he realizes that it is a sound being torn from the crumpled form of Mairon before him. He watches in benevolent concern as his brother’s shoulders shake.

“I was feared for thy sake and thy spirit, little one. I would never hurt thee in such a manner as I rent It, never fear!” He wonders what else he can say to soothe his brother’s cries, which seem to have only increased in pitch and desperation, rather than calmed. “There is nothing more to fear: thou canst come home with me!”

Mairon moves with such unexpected speed and ferocity that Eönwë, surprised and still on edge with the instincts of war, has the long edge of Vartasár raised parallel to his throat again by the time his brother has risen and crowded up against him, a snarl re-opening the cracks on his stony face.

“So.” For all the heat and fire of his movement, Mairon’s voice is hard and cold. “Ill-content with vexing us then, thou bringest thy self-righteous assumptions here to attempt a new savagery, and in doing so, have stolen from this middle earth one of the last few good things it might boast. Our lord and our god!” Utterly uncaring of the steel of Vartasár against his throat, Mairon turns his head aside swiftly: Eönwë doubts this exclamation is intended for him, though. “Better thou wouldst not have abandoned us!”

When he does turn back, though, Mairon’s movement slices a thin line open across his throat: entranced despite himself, Eönwë watches the captivating red drip of proof that his brother is indeed bound to a carnal form, though perhaps less than the Enemy had been.

Seeing where his interest has gone, Mairon snarls. “Well, brother. It seems that thou will have thy wish, no matter the end.”

“Whatever art thou on about now, silly thing?” Eönwë chides, looking away from the crimson trail with some effort. How bright it was, how splendid a proof that his brother had survived!

“Regretfully, we have resolved that we must take back our earlier offer: no matter what thy gods have told thee of this middle earth and of us, we have decided that thou may not have either after all. As desperate as thou hast made us, as low as we have fallen with no chance of rising, we will not submit to thee, ever again.” Before Eönwë can protest that neither he nor the Valar had said asked such a thing of him, though, Mairon continues: “We will die, first. Though it seems thou likest the look of that just as much. Perhaps we might have guessed.”

“How couldst say such a thing?” Eönwë asks incredulously. He pushes Vartasár forward, trying to encourage his younger brother to move, but Mairon stands his ground, and the hallowed steel cuts a little deeper into his flesh before Eönwë senses his stubbornness and stops pressing. “Thou pilest blasphemy atop blasphemy until I wonder thou canst see any light at all!”

He doesn’t like the unholy gleam that lights Mairon’s strange new yellow eyes at the statement.

_(He doesn’t know this fey look, yet, but he will, before this strange, half-lit autumn is gone. He will see it again in the eyes of Fëanor’s last two sons: a horrible desperation for some kind of a certitude in a world run mad, even if the only certitude possible is that of complete annihilation. For what else awaits those who have sworn themselves to the Darkness beyond the reach of the Valar, or to a Maia who was never intended to leave Arda without the direct bidding of the One? But Eönwë will still see that look. He will see it in the eyes of the flame-headed brother, if less in the other, and Eönwë will call his troops back, order them to let the Fëanorians pass. He will gain the reputation of a kind god for this act, even when the news comes back that the Sons are gone: the one at his own hand, the other to the sea. When he hears of this, Eönwë will shrug, and decide that there is no point in wondering if this is what his brother had meant. No good can come of it now._

_But that is then, and this is now.)_

Now Eönwë is simply puzzled.

“A surprising thought for thee, then, brother: we cannot.” Mairon laughs, another of those wild new noises, and Vartasár cuts a little deeper still at the bob of his throat: another of the odd quirks of a fully carnal body, Eönwë decides, that it must move in order to produce sound. “There is no light we can see, for the One has abandoned us and the gods never had us in the first.”

A drop of water leaks from Mairon’s left eye and slides down the contour of one crack in his stony face. Eönwë watches its path in bewilderment before it is lost down the crack. What is this?

“We suspected that we had done something amiss, these last centuries,” Mairon whispers, and there, there Eönwë can hear a note of his old voice: lost, and pleading for help. Eönwë burns to aid him, but is not quite sure how he can: he should probably hold Vartasár steady. “That our purpose had gone astray, or that we had, or worse, that our lord had fallen from his great calling. Perhaps he had never even had one, and we had chosen wrongly. Brother, how our fears burned us!”

That, at least, Eönwë knows the answer to. “It is very simple, little one, as I keep telling thee. Thou are loved, thou art cherished, thou art admirable. Thou hast done wrong, but thou canst be forgiven. All that is needed is to come with me!”

Of a sudden Mairon’s slight weight is no longer pressing against Vartasár, and Eönwë stumbles a little as he rebalances. When he looks up, Mairon has returned to his original place atop the cliff, facing west out over the sea but only looking down, down at the ruins beneath him.

“So. Still thou wilt counsel that we return to Valinor – return to the place where we were shunned and harassed, the land where we fought to draw breath, the shores where thy slave-drivers claimed to love thee while promising us as the reward of thy service. It seems a good plan. Very well! Let us return to Valinor.”

“Marvelous.” Eönwë beams. He slides Vartasár back into her scabbard, pushing away the thought that Mairon’s blood – Mairon’s blood! – will color the leather, that the rich crimson will serve as a reminder of why he serves the Valar with such faith and devotion: they have given him back his brother! “Thy acquiescence is all I could ask for, little one! I am overjoyed.”

Striding up behind Mairon, Eönwë lays an arm across his brother’s shoulders – so hardened, so weary! – and brushes a kiss to the messy hair. Perhaps, someday, it will be enough to erase their shared memories of the Enemy’s hands there.

“Release me, Eönwë,” his brother says quietly, exhaustion tempering the echo of his old playful demand. Knowing this is a silent demand for love and attention, Eönwë embraces him harder.

They stand there together, watching the world that the Enemy has marred crumble into the refuse it is, until Eönwë must return to the encampment, prepare his tent and their ship for his brother’s return.

**Author's Note:**

> Eönwë won't accept that no means no, and persists in thinking and saying that he knows Mairon's desires. He is also possessive, sometimes violently so, and he describes Mairon as a brother and a body simultaneously. The Valar are neither kind nor just.
> 
> Ok! That being said, here are some language notes:  
> 1\. Eönwë's sword is basically named Bitter Betrayal (Q. varta-, sára: I imagine that the Elves Aule had helping him were like, 'you want to do what with this thing? umm, ok, we'll give it a suitable name)  
> 2\. Valaraukar (Q. Balrog) and angulóke (Q. dragon, fire-breathing dragon) are strange words for a Maia to be using, but for the moment I'm too intimidated by the daunting power and responsibility of creating Valarin alternatives.  
> 3\. Morionnië are the orcs (Q. "dark animals/creatures," mornië, mórë, + onna: similar to Moriquendi, alternative to S. yrch or Q. urco)
> 
> (dropping my [tumblr](http://raisingcain-onceagain.tumblr.com/) here, casual-like, just in case. . .)


End file.
